Lead in water fountains: What schools are doing

Rockland BOCES in West Nyack, demonstrates how they collect water samples to be sent to a lab for lead testing May 24, 2016. BOCES is handling the testing for most of Rockland's public school districts.
Peter Carr/The Journal News

Six school systems in Westchester and Rockland that have completed water sampling for lead this year.

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Out of order notices were taped near the drinking fountains at the Davis Elementary School in New Rochelle on May 5.(Photo11: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)Buy Photo

Many school districts across the lower Hudson Valley have in recent weeks and months focused on one common thing: getting the lead out.

At an almost daily rate, school district officials in Rockland and Westchester counties have sent notices to parents alerting them of tests beginning or ending, and, in some cases, remediation efforts where unsafe lead levels were detected.

The surge of local school districts testing for lead — which is in large part because of the water contamination crises that have unfolded in Flint, Michigan, and the school system in Newark, New Jersey — has resulted in varying results and testing procedures, and few easy solutions.

The Journal News/lohud.com has reported on six school systems in Westchester and Rockland that have completed water sampling for lead this year.

Of those, all have found at least one sample that tested above the federal “action level” — or 15 parts per billion (ppb) — that has resulted in short- and long-term solutions, like shutting down fixtures until further notice or even replacing a water fountain.

“It’s a little bit of a whack-a-mole type problem,” said Ed Garvey, the technical vice president for Louis Berger, a consulting firm that has been hired by some districts to help with testing. “It’s tough to treat and it’s tough to chase down.”

Yonkers and Clarkstown — two of the biggest school districts in their respective counties — have shut down, respectively, 80 and 104 water fixtures in the last several weeks as testing was ongoing. Both districts contained faucets that tested lead levels over 2,000 ppb. Solutions to deal with those faucets and fountains are still being considered in both districts.

By comparison, Blind Brook, a wealthier district in Westchester with three school buildings, had one drinking fountain that contained a lead level of 68 ppb and officials opted to shut down the fixture and replace it.

Pelham’s water fountains all tested below federal levels for lead, but 53 hand-washing and science lab sinks tested for high lead levels and required remedial action, which in this case meant installing filters.

Meanwhile, New Rochelle had initially shut down out-of-compliance fountains and sinks after targeted sampling discovered high levels of lead in one area of one of its 10 school buildings. The district began flush tests to get rid of the bad water, but it was later determined the problem may have circulated to other areas of the building from the flushing. The district is now beginning a comprehensive sampling at all of its schools.

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Michael Galland, the principal at the Davis Elementary School in New Rochelle, is pictured with a row of filled water bottles at the school on May 5.(Photo11: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)

Limited options

While the local list of schools testing for lead is growing, the resources available to help those districts is limited.

This is partly because the testing school districts are conducting is voluntary and not often done on a regular basis despite the fact that many school districts have old buildings and have sporadically tested positively for unsafe levels of lead in decades past.

“What is important to us here is getting on a regular system, flow of testing schedule,” said Peter Giarrizzo, schools superintendent in Pelham, which last tested in 2011 and again tested this year. “It is all one big complex system and it all needs and requires a level of oversight, testing and retesting.”

Giarrizzo said he was not surprised that its water fountains were free of high lead levels, in part because they were replaced in 2011 with filters for lead in them.

Rockland BOCES chief operating officer Mary Jean Marsico sent a letter to families and staff Friday stating the agency had scheduled a fresh round of water tests at campuses, even though it had tested several years ago.

"We don't anticipate any issues, and we feel confident in the additional, precautionary measures we are taking to ensure the safety of our water fixtures and faucets," Marsico said.

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Seth Armstrong health and safety technician at Rockland BOCES in West Nyack, demonstrates how he collects a water sample to be sent to a lab for a lead test May 24.(Photo11: Peter Carr/The Journal News)

While the New York City Department of Education has had a system in place since 2002 to regularly test the water in its school buildings and an online database showing whether testing has been performed, nothing like this database exists in Westchester or Rockland counties or statewide.

A state Education Department spokeswoman wrote in an email that the department “does not determine whether potential public health threats may exist in our schools and communities or are being monitored and evaluated properly. We rely on health professionals in other regulatory agencies to provide guidance, through regulatory action, to identify these requirements.”

Preventative measures

Peter Richel, chief of pediatrics at Northern Westchester Hospital, said children are screened for lead at ages 1, 2 and 3, and said that is sufficient unless symptoms of lead ingestion show up. Symptoms include cramping, vomiting, loss of appetite, fatigue, memory loss and potentially aggressive behavior.

Richel said he doesn’t think school-age children would need additional lead blood tests and hasn’t noticed a difference in lead levels among young children he has screened in recent years.

“I think the schools are doing their due diligence, having experts come in,” Richel said. “I think that’s probably sufficient school-wise, and of course that’s up to the individual family practitioner to screen infants and then to check on any symptoms of any age.”

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Seth Armstrong, health and safety technician at Rockland BOCES in West Nyack, demonstrates how he collects a water sample to be sent to a lab for a lead test May 24.(Photo11: Peter Carr/The Journal News)

Districts that test their water also have to deal with the extra costs to test, which can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars depending on the number of samples tested.

Many of the districts in Rockland and Westchester that have begun testing are paying out of pocket. New Rochelle's testing has been estimated to cost $22,000, but it will receive reimbursements through Cooperative Service Agreements, or CoSer, an optional shared services program with BOCES.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, announced legislation earlier this month that would establish a $20 million federal grant program that public schools nationwide could tap into to cover the costs of testing water for lead levels.

The legislation is included in the Water Resource Development Act that passed the committee level but has yet to be brought to the floor for debate.

Ongoing testing in Westchester

Edgar Glascott, supervisor for school safety and facilities for Southern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services, said this year he has assisted about 10 school districts connect with two different consultants — New Jersey-based Louis Berger and New York-based Regulatory Compliance — about potential lead testing. Glascott said he cannot advise them on best practices for lead testing but rather provide guidance and support.

“Based on what’s going on in the country and in our area, I think more superintendents will engage through their board of educations about what direction they want to go in,” Glascott said. “Districts are doing whatever they need, whatever they feel is necessary and being proactive for the safety for their staff and students and that’s kind of what I’m here for.”

Pelham, Blind Brook, Briarcliff Manor and New Rochelle used one of the two consultants that are suggested by SWBOCES to complete water testing.

The Mount Vernon school district, which will begin sample testing this week, and the Ossining school district, which has finished its sampling and is waiting on the results, both hired independent consulting firms.

“We just want to make sure that we take everything into account so that it’s a safe environment for everyone,” said Raymond Sanchez, Ossining schools superintendent. “It wasn’t something we were told to do, but we thought was important to do.”

Yonkers' school district, which is part of the "Big 5" cities in the state that have no independent taxing or bonding authority and are essentially branches of city government, hired consulting firm E&R Engineering and will test the samples using the city lab. Yonkers has trained its schools facilities staff to sample the water in its 39 buildings that are on average 75 years old.

Yonkers wrapped up its water sampling over the weekend and is compiling its final reports on the results of those samples. Some samples resulted in the immediate shutdown of 80 fixtures as results came in above federal standards.

Ongoing testing in Rockland

Clarkstown is the only Rockland district that has so far completed testing and will continue flushing water to address the 104 instances of high lead levels. School officials in East Ramapo, Nanuet, North Rockland, Nyack, Pearl River, Ramapo Central and South Orangetown will be conducting rounds of sample testing over the next few weeks and plan to make the results public once available.

South Orangetown Central School District Superintendent Robert Pritchard said testing is underway and samples drawn at the William O. Schaefer and Cottage Lane elementary schools are "well below" the EPA action level. Fifty locations at each school were sampled.

"Even before we were made aware of the issue in Clarkstown School District, our director of facilities had been working with Rockland BOCES Health and Safety Department to complete the testing of our schools," he said.

Sampling is scheduled to begin at South Orangetown Middle School and Tappan Zee High School this week and should take four to five days, he said. The superintendent anticipates the results being available within two weeks.

Pearl River Superintendent Marco Pochintesta said while "there are no indications that the water in the schools and buildings is unsafe," school officials "take issues of safety very seriously."

Nyack and Nanuet school officials expect testing to begin this week and continue through June. Nanuet School Superintendent Mark S. McNeill said in an email to parents that 200 samples across the district's four buildings will be tested and results would be presented at the school board's June 21 meeting.

Rockland BOCES has been retained to conduct sample testing of the water for excessive lead concentrations in seven of Rockland's eight public school districts, spokesman Scott Salotto said.

"BOCES will also retest all of our locations, even though we conducted water sampling tests several years ago," Salotto said.

The Clarkstown Board of Education plans to address the results of water tests during its June 2 meeting. Representatives from Adelaide, the firm it retained in March for $30,000, as well as the Rockland County Department of Health will be present to field questions.

In a letter sent to parents last week, Clarkstown Schools Superintendent J. Thomas Morton said 16 drinking fountains and 88 sinks were turned off after the discovery of high lead levels. Based on the outcome of the flush tests, officials said they'd develop a mitigation plan that could include replacing fixtures, installing filtration devices or removing outlets.